He shrugs. “Like I said, greedy and exploitative. I could have gotten the price down, but I had to beat you back to the apartment.”
“Why?”
Guilt once again flickers across his golden gaze. “Because your apartment looks out to the front, and we’ve been hiding the fact that we took the apartment a few doors from yours to watch over you.” He smiles wryly at me. “I got caught in trafficon the way back. If Torin hadn’t locked the stupid door before he crashed, you wouldn’t have seen me. Are you angry with me?”
I shake my head, too relieved to have my bracelet back to be angry at him for following me. “I can’t pay you back for the bracelet. I mean, I could, but it would take a long time to save that much money.”
“I’m not asking you to pay me back. It’s yours. It still would have been yours if we hadn’t fucked things up. You sold it to afford the rent on this place, didn’t you?”
After debating with myself about whether I should lie, I nod. “My parents wouldn’t even open the front gate to me after I publicly embarrassed them. I got $700 for it.”
“Sevenhundred!” He glares down at me. “That bracelet is worth at least five times that price. I’m tempted to go back and set the guy’s shop on fire for ripping you off like that.”
I almost want to smile. “You sound like Lucia.”
“Lucia?”
“A neighbor you never want to piss off.”
He backs up a step, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Well, I’ll let you relax from work. You must be tired.”
“I am.”
He nods again and turns to leave. And he stops with one large hand around my doorknob and his back to me. “I ran because I still wanted you.”
“I don’t understand.”
He turns around and looks at me. “What I did to you in the library…”
I feel my face harden. “I don’t want to talk about it, Archer.”
“I didn’t trust you,” he says quietly, his eyes locked with mine. “I thought you were the enemy in our lives to spy on us, and even then, I couldn’t help but want you. And I was ashamed of myself for wanting you more than wanting to protect my pack. That’s all I wanted to say. I’ll go now.”
He turns to leave, but I’m not ready for this conversation to be over. With a sigh, I walk over to my dining set and pull up a chair. “Where did you go?”
He turns to face me, eyebrow raised. “When?”
“After you left me.”
“To the bathroom, where I failed to deal with the issue of still wanting you.”
I frown. “Deal with the…”
He lifts his right hand and glances at the front of his pants.
“Oh.” My cheeks burn, and a tiny smile pulls at one corner of his mouth.
“Then where did you go?”
“After I freaked out to Torin and Callum, I went to a bar where I nearly pushed a woman off her bar stool for leaning her shoulder against mine.”
I massage my forehead. “I’m going to regret this.” I point at the dining chair opposite me. “Sit down.”
He walks over to the chair and sinks into it. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything that happened in the bar.”
Archer tells me about Isla, who accused him of trying to drink away his problems with Irish whiskey and offered herself up as a distraction instead. He refused, leaving the bar to walk the street for nearly three hours.
